


It is not the wine that makes us drunk

by Castillon02



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alcohol, Fluff, Glasses, M/M, MI6 Squad - Freeform, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 06:26:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9535763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Castillon02/pseuds/Castillon02
Summary: Bond, Moneypenny, and Tanner take Q out for drinks to celebrate the end of a very long day. Fluff ensues, including Q's glasses getting passed around like a party favor and Bond having an honorable intention.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beginte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beginte/gifts).



> For Beginte's prompt, "You're cute with glasses"

Tanner knew the best places. Private, with no stupid people. And warm. So warm. There was a big fireplace in front of the sofa and he had Tanner on one side and Bond on the other, close enough for their shoulders to touch his because Moneypenny was there too, next to Tanner, and it was a big sofa but not that big. Heat from all sides. A drink or three ago, Q had even shrugged off his suit jacket—it was lying on his lap like a cat blanket so he couldn’t walk away without it—and rolled up the sleeves of his pricey dress shirt. 

“—and then he said that he’d dreamed he was skiing. Oh, no—it wasn’t that funny, Q!” Moneypenny hid her chuckles behind her hand.

“Everything’s funny when you’ve been awake for as long as he has,” Tanner said over Q’s laughter. “Especially when you’ve been dealing with 005.” 

“005 was fine,” Bond put in. “It was the budget meeting afterward that kept him up.” 

“Oh dear,” Q said after he’d stopped laughing and belatedly processed what had happened. There was a wet purple stain on his shirt now, his fancy one. Moneypenny had finished her dirty joke at the exact moment he’d taken a swig of the pretty cocktail she’d ordered him; the spray had gone everywhere, and in his convulsions of laughter the rest of the drink had too. Mostly on himself, which was okay, but he had also spilled some on Tanner and Bond, who thankfully seemed more amused than annoyed. 

“I’m sorry,” Q said, biting his lip and trying to look contrite instead of laughing at the alcohol dripping down Tanner’s cheek, like a purple tear. An anime girl tear. Anime girl Tanner would definitely have large breasts, carry a clipboard around, and have a very special episode about how she couldn’t just be everyone’s friend without having her own emotional needs cared for too. 

“Better in than out, budget man,” Tanner chided, wiping his face with an actual handkerchief like someone from the Victorian era, but he was smiling. 

Tanner was the best. They were all ungrateful berks who didn’t deserve him. Except Moneypenny.

Bond, on the other hand, caught his eye and sighed at the wet spots on the arm of his suit just like Q had sighed at the organic matter lodged in the innards of Bond’s gun, like it was only what he had expected, but really, we should probably be able to do better than this, shouldn’t we?

Q grinned, because of course this was their game. “I’m afraid it couldn’t be helped,” he said, pleased to get a chance to play Bond’s part for once. “There was a komodo dragon involved, or possibly a fucking hilarious woman; it’s all a bit hazy.” 

“Hazy?” Bond asked, giving him a skeptical squint even as his mouth twitched at the corners. “Need your specs examined, do you?” 

Did he? Just in case, Q took them off and peered at them, and then through them. “I don’t think so,” he said. “They seem to be working.” 

Moneypenny reached around Tanner and nicked the glasses from Q’s hands. “How hazy are things now?” she asked. 

“You are clearly a brilliant, fucking hilarious woman,” Q said. “You know, I can see fairly well without those.” He laughed a little; had everyone thought he was blind without them? 

“How well, exactly, is fairly well?” Tanner asked in a peculiar tone of voice. 

Oh. Right. Q actually _had_ led Tanner to believe he was blind as a bat without his specs. Oops. He winced. 

He’d woken up on Tanner’s sofa after their last pub night, and Tanner had stumbled in for his morning tea, clearly ignorant of the hearts and flowers that Mariam, his wife, must have drawn all over Tanner’s face in the night. Q possibly, maybe, might have completely failed to say a word about the new decorations before Tanner had gone to the corner store to fetch some things for morning-after breakfast. 

Faces were just fuzzy blobs, he might have said when Tanner had grumped at him later. With his glasses on the coffee table Tanner was just a Tanner-shaped blur. Really. 

“Oh, not _that_ well,” Q backpedaled, but he was a terrible liar; Tanner had just been too hungover to notice that morning.

They were all three staring at him now, Bond and Moneypenny and Tanner, with little smirks creeping up on their faces. 

“I think we need a bit of clarification,” Moneypenny said, grinning. 

“On how much clarification you need,” Bond added. 

“Or how little,” Tanner said. 

In unison, Bond and Tanner gripped his shoulders and Moneypenny slipped Q’s glasses onto her own face. 

Bond and Tanner pressed him back against the sofa, only play-firm, a joke of keeping him prisoner to wait for Moneypenny’s verdict. Their hands were warm through his shirt; Q relaxed into them. How nice to be touched by people he trusted. Would he be up for an orgy if they asked him? He couldn’t tell. And anyway, they wouldn’t; Tanner had Mariam to think of, Moneypenny generally liked to fuck people who weren’t coworkers, and Bond—well, Q had invested a lot of effort into not sleeping with Bond, so why quit now? 

He could enjoy the hands while they lasted, however. “Mmm,” he said, leaning back into the sofa, and ignored Tanner and Bond’s chuckles. 

Meanwhile, Moneypenny made a great show of peering through his glasses at different angles and humming thoughtfully. The plain frames looked odd on her face, particularly in combination with her vibrant blue dress, like someone with an idea that all secretaries should wear bulky black glasses had gone and Sharpie’d them on. Q could see himself issuing her with a pair of prescriptionless gadget specs to aid her bodyguard work with M at fancy to-dos, but she’d probably want them in blue or red—gold, maybe. The real question was, would she prefer the video-transmitting lenses or something with a little more firepower? 

Which reminded him: “Careful not to tap the bridge in the middle three times in a row,” Q told her. “It’d be a bit not good.” 

“Oh, now you tell me,” Moneypenny said, and nearly crossed her eyes trying to aim an intrigued look at the dangerous bit. 

“Don’t get me kicked out of my favorite pub for blowing things up,” Tanner warned them. 

“It’s not a big deal as long as your post-explosion bribe is big enough,” Bond said. 

“I can’t think why, but none of us budgets for post explosion-bribes except you,” Moneypenny said. “Anyway, I’ve seen enough that I can stop wearing these.” She removed the glasses by the earpieces, then straightened her back, lifted her chin, and delivered her verdict to the assembly. “These don’t seem very strong at all. I have good eyes, and they’re only a little bothered by this prescription. Someone,” she smiled wickedly at Q, “has been telling Tanner some tall tales.” 

“Ha!” Tanner said. 

“But maybe Tanner should try them himself, just to be sure of what the boffin’s-eye view looks like,” Moneypenny said, carefully passing Q’s glasses to Tanner. 

Q covered a large yawn. Being held prisoner on the sofa was surprisingly restful. “It’s always better to verify through multiple sources,” he agreed. 

Bond snorted next to him. “You’re not helping yourself,” he muttered in Q’s ear, his breath hot against Q’s skin. 

Q’s cheeks warmed. ‘I don’t need to help myself,’ he wanted to say; help was for people who weren’t safe in their Moneypenny-Tanner-Bond cocoons. But he couldn’t get the words out, because he was a terrible liar and he needed to help himself quite desperately: help himself avoid the flytrap of Bond’s sexuality and preserve their positive working relationship; help himself remember the white lies he told his friends; help himself get more sleep and exercise and probably masturbation too, if he was being honest, because he deserved more quality orgasms than he could get half-asleep in the shower whenever he remembered that his cock wasn’t just for pissing. He deserved multiple erogenous zones and vibrators and a drawn-out seduction of himself at the very least. 

“Er,” Q said, trying to remember what Bond’s comment had been in the first place. 

Luckily, Tanner moved things along, letting go of Q’s shoulder so he could use both hands to put on Q’s glasses, a level of care that Q appreciated. “Yes,” Tanner said, squinting through the lenses, “these are definitely… Wait. Hold on.” Tanner stopped squinting. “This actually looks quite good. Do I need glasses?” 

“Maybe,” Bond said, “but not those!” 

“I should say not,” Moneypenny agreed. 

Q made a noise that he hoped communicated the damage being done to his psyche by the combination of his glasses and Tanner’s face. The dark upper frame of the glasses emphasized Tanner’s receding hairline while masking some of the friendly expressiveness of his features, and the frameless bottoms that worked on Q only made Tanner look dangerously wishy-washy. The glasses had obliterated Tanner’s overworked but determined anime girl qualities and replaced them with a swotty bureaucrat turned up to eleven. 

“Right,” Tanner said slowly, his eyes flicking from one horrified expression to the next. “I’ll just take these off.” He did so. The swotty bureaucrat disappeared, replaced by good old Tanner again. 

“I’ll make you an appointment with our optometrist,” Q told him, pulling out his mobile to type in a couple of reminders for the next day: _1) Tanner’s glasses. 2) Be kind to your cock._ “And if you want, you can take one of my people with you when you pick out your frames. We might be able to do a bit of...customization, shall we say.” Q tapped the side of his own glasses and winked. Some special specs would be just the thing to make sure Tanner’s inner anime girl felt appreciated. 

“Gadget glasses?” Tanner asked, his eyes lighting up. Only a moment later, they dulled again. “Do you—do you have the budget for that?” He winced, clearly bracing himself for Q to say no. He had listened to Q’s rants about the 00-shaped black holes in his funding often enough. 

Q smirked. Had he prepared for his budget meeting by memorizing MI6’s every financial rule and byzantine fiscal bylaw instead of sleeping after 005 got off the comms? Yes, yes he had. “You hardly ever use your personal defense fund, so we can take the money for any materials out of there,” he said. “Being around Bond so frequently is more than enough to qualify you for a Branch-issued safety device. So yes, we have the budget.” 

“I forgive you for letting me go out in public with love-daisies on my chin,” Tanner announced, bumping against him with apparent delight. 

Q ping-ponged between Bond and Tanner’s shoulders for a wonderful moment and didn’t point out that they had actually been love-sunflowers, with pointed petals instead of rounded ones. 

Bond reached around Q and poked Tanner’s knee. “You’re welcome,” he said. “Now hand me those, I need to see if I rate new glasses, too.” 

To his credit, Tanner glanced at Q and waited for his nod before handing them over. 

Bond settled Q’s glasses on his face, which went through the now-familiar frown and squint as his eyes struggled to adjust. “Well, you certainly need them,” Bond said, giving them all an above-the-glasses stare before switching to looking back through the lenses again.

Q’s glasses. On Bond’s face. 

Bond looking at him through Q’s glasses. 

Bond giving him the above-the-glasses stare, just like a—

“Oh no,” Q said. Why had he nodded to Tanner? Why hadn’t he taken his glasses back and prevented this from happening? 

“Oh yes,” Moneypenny said gleefully. “Take your jacket off, Bond!” 

“Oh, what?” Tanner asked, frowning in confusion. Poor heterosexual Tanner. 

Bond slipped out of his jacket, further revealing the white collared shirt and dark tie underneath, which—oh dear, yes, it did emphasize the effect. “This do?” he asked, and struck a pose, arching his eyebrows and peering sternly over the black rims of the glasses, meeting each of their eyes in turn. 

“Oh,” Tanner said, his voice strangled. 

Q’s face burned. The thing was—the thing was that in the glow of the firelight, with the glasses on his face, Bond was close to looking like the best possible version of every naughty librarian fantasy, every hot-for-teacher daydream, and every nerdy, improbable academic-slash-model-slash-millionaire romance cover from the queer pulps he’d read as a teenager. The only thing Bond needed to complete the image was some tweed. 

“You all have overdue books,” Bond rumbled at them, his eyes smoldering over the rims of the glasses. “Now, you may pay the fines, or…” He trailed off suggestively, and it didn’t matter that his lips were beginning to curve with amusement—Q still wanted to get down on his knees and offer him a blowjob. 

Instead he dug his fingers into the suit jacket on his lap and looked intently into the fire in front of them. 

“All right, take them off before Q combusts,” Moneypenny said, leveling a playful glare at Bond, and then gave a self-deprecating snort. “Or before we have to pay for new upholstery on this sofa, for that matter.” 

“Yes, do stop looking sexy,” Tanner added. “Mariam and I have an agreement: no orgies unless she’s there with me.” 

Q looked away from the fireplace to stare at Tanner and found Bond and Moneypenny doing the same thing. 

“It's a good agreement,” Tanner said beatifically, with absolutely no indication of whether he was bullshitting them or not. “Now, give Q his glasses back.” He nodded at the glasses in Bond’s hands. 

“Not yet,” Bond said stubbornly, and folded them so he could hold them securely in one hand. “He’s seen all of us in glasses, but I haven’t had a good chance to see what he looks like without them.” Bond turned as if to scrutinize him. 

Just for that, Q looked in the opposite direction. Let Moneypenny and Tanner get to see the apparent marvel of his glasses-free visage. 

Moneypenny leaned in front of Tanner for a better view. “So you do have a pair of eyes under those things,” she commented. 

“I suppose they couldn’t remain concealed behind a pair of transparent lenses forever,” Q said dryly. 

“Well, I think you look pretty much the same,” Tanner said. Q made a mental note to make sure his future glasses gadget was something fun. 

And then, because he couldn’t just keep looking at Tanner and Moneypenny all night, Q turned back, jutted his chin out, and met Bond’s stare. 

Christ, his eyes were blue. Q could see himself reflected in them, his expression shuttered as if to make up for his face’s physical nakedness. He could also see the movement of Bond’s pupils, the way they darted across his face before holding steady as Bond met his gaze. 

“You look cute without them,” Bond said after a pause. 

Tanner snorted, and in his peripheral vision, Q caught a glimpse of Moneypenny face-palming. Cute? Really? Bond had to be taking the piss. Besides, Q had heard that line before. “Let me guess: you’re going to tell me that if I just put on a dress and a little makeup I have the potential to be a real looker.” He arched his eyebrows. 

“No,” Bond said, and before Q knew what was happening his glasses had been unfolded and Bond’s hands, glasses included, were right in front of his face. 

Q held himself as still as he could, his breath caught in his throat. He was only vaguely aware of Moneypenny and Tanner watching. 

Bond gently slid the arms of the glasses over Q’s temples until the earpieces curved around his ears, and the lenses dropped back in front of his eyes, and the solid reassuring weight of the bridge settled again on his nose. “You look cute with glasses, too,” Bond said, a smile on his face that couldn’t be anything but fond. 

“Oh,” Q said dumbly. 

“And I think that’s our cue to go,” Moneypenny announced, standing up. “Come on, Tanner, you can escort me to my car while these two figure out what they’re doing.” 

“It would be my pleasure,” Tanner said, and after collecting their coats and extending a last congratulations for Q’s mission success with 005, he and Moneypenny were out the door. 

“Did they really just leave me with you?” Q asked, looking longingly at the exit the two people he mostly didn’t want to shag had taken. 

“I think,” Bond said, “that they might have assumed I had honorable intentions.” 

Q laughed without thinking about it, but Bond didn’t join in, didn’t even smile. “Oh,” Q said again. 

Bond rolled his shoulders like a bird in the rain. “I would like,” he said, “to buy you a cup of tea.” His eyes were intent. 

“A literal cup of tea,” Q clarified. “One that isn’t a metaphor for shagging.” 

Bond heaved a for-fuck’s-sake-007 kind of sigh. “A cup of tea,” he said patiently. “One that’s a metaphor for the possible pursuit of a long-term relationship. This relationship would include shagging and non-shagging activities.” 

“Good shagging?” Q made sure to ask, thinking of reminder number two. 

“Probably even more explosive than your glasses,” Bond said. 

“And good non-shagging?” Q asked, partly because it was important to be thorough but mostly just to be difficult. He was going to say yes. This was happening, Bond was—and he was—and they were— 

Bond's eyes crinkled at the corners and he stood up. “Why don’t we make a start on the non-shagging now, so you can see for yourself?” he said, and extended a hand to Q. “Let me walk you home.” 

Q felt light from the tips of his toes to the ends of his hair, his lungs full as if to bursting, his muscles poised to leap, to jump, to dance, to grab Bond’s hand and waltz them down the stairs, past the bar, and into the cold of London’s streets in January. 

Instead Q took Bond’s hand and let himself be pulled off the sofa. Bond’s hand was bigger than his, muscled and callused from his frequent use of firearms. Q’s gun had made its marks on Bond—maybe it wasn’t so strange that Q might have started to do the same. 

They collected Q’s suit jacket from where it had fallen to the floor when Q had stood, bundled into their coats, and stepped back out into the cold of the world, where the hours without sleep seemed heavier and the distance to his flat longer. They had left the glow of the pub behind them, but Bond’s hand was still tucked into his, strong and warm. Occasionally he and Bond bumped against each other for no reason at all, and Bond tucked his cold nose against Q’s neck to make him squeak, and Q pulled him aside for kisses. In the glow of the street lamps he saw his reflection again in Bond’s eyes, wearing glasses this time and smiling. 

**Author's Note:**

> Drunk!Q POV is something I haven't undertaken before and am a little uncertain about. Constructive criticism is welcome. Thank you for reading! <3


End file.
